On 6/24/08 at 3:29 AM, acbev at lanl.gov (Andrew Beveridge) wrote:
>I am writing a package file for Mathematica. I have two versions of
>Mathematica targeted: 5.2 and 6.0.x.
>It would be nice to use some of the improvements in Version 6.0.x
>without losing backwards compatibility with Version 5.2.
>I imagine one way to implement this would be the following:
>If $VersionNumber >= 6 then ... else ...
>However, I would prefer not to put a bunch of If statements into my
>code; multiple lines would have to be modified. Is there are more
>elegant way around this problem? Can a function be defined for a
>particular versions of Mathematica in a package file?
Yes, a function can be defined for a particular version of
Mathematica. You could have a construct like
If[$VersionNumber >=6,
myfunc[x_]:=x^2,
myfunc[x_]:=2 x];
That is you can put the definitions for functions inside an If
construct. And if you all the code for version 5 separate from
all of the code for version 6, you should be able use one If
construct. In essence what you are doing is making your function
definitions for version 5 part of a compound expression and
function definitions for version 6 part of another compound
expression. Then the If construct determines which compound
expression is evaluated which ensures the correct definitions
are used.
For awhile, I was using this type of construct in my init.m file
so that I could keep both versions 5 and 6 running with the same
init.m file quite successfully. I've since edited this out since
I no longer use version 5.x.